Courts ban MBTA riders as assaults against riders, drivers increase

When Joseph Pacheco appeared in court -- charged with assaulting a young couple traveling on a Red Line train with their toddler last month – the judge ordered the 43-year-old Weymouth man held on $10,000 bail and also agreed to a request from the prosecutor.

Pacheco was banned from riding on the MBTA.

It's a request prosecutors are making routinely as assaults against riders and workers increase. Last year there were 151 aggravated assaults against T riders, up 20 percent from the year before.

More MBTA drivers are being assaulted as well, at a rate of three every week on average.

Bus driver Sharina Byrd said she was driving the No. 86 bus down Chestnut Hill Avenue in Brighton when a man grabbed her steering wheel.

"I thought I was going to get beat up or something," Byrd said. "It just came out of nowhere. I'm fighting for the wheel and all I could see were cars coming."

Byrd was unharmed physically, but mentally shaken.

"I think bus drivers every day, we put our lives at risk," she said.

"Judges in many cases will issue orders to individuals to stay away," said Superintendent-in-Chief Joseph O'Connor of the MBTA Transit Police

There's no exact number of banned individuals, but O'Connor said judges have imposed stay-away orders on dozens of suspects.

"We want to create a safe environment in the transit system, not only for our riders but for our employees who are doing their jobs," he said.

"We just want get people on and get them to their destination as safe as possible and go home. That's all we want to do," said Byrd.

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